my notes, but I may also be looking at you. So Psalm 63 today. Before we read this word together, let's go to the Lord and let's ask his blessing on the reading and the studying of his word. Let's pray. O gracious Lord, our God, we thank you that you are the God of all the earth. We pray that as we come to your word, you would give us your Holy Spirit, that we would hear from you, we would learn from you. we would see and understand more of Christ our Savior. Oh Lord God, we pray, build us up, strengthen us in spirit so that we may know you more and love you, we pray in Christ's name, amen. Well, hear now God's word as we find it, Psalm 63. This is a Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live. In your name, I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night. For you have been my help. And in the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me. But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down to the depths of the earth They shall be given over to the power of the sword. They shall be a portion for jackals. But the king shall rejoice in God. All who swear by him shall exult, for the mouths of liars will be stopped. Thus far, the reading of God's holy and inerrant word. May he add a blessing as we study it together today. Last week, the Washington Post ran one of those articles with a very long, very descriptive title. This is the title of the article. It said, for millions of Americans, no church on Sunday is coronavirus's cruelest closure so far. And that headline is enough to give you the angle. But the Post goes on to demonstrate, to detail the spiritual disruption that the pandemic is causing throughout America. And at one point, they quote a pastor in DC whose name is Randolph McKim. And McKim said, nothing has so contributed to the state of panic in this community as the fact that the normal religious life of our city has been disorganized. Those words pretty accurately describe what many of us are experiencing. And yet those words were written at a different time and for a different pandemic. You see, Randolph McKim was a pastor in 1918 during the outbreak of the Spanish flu. That's not to say that coronavirus will necessarily be like the Spanish flu or as bad as the Spanish flu, but it is to remind us that what we're experiencing right now is not normal. The closest parallel we have is about a hundred years ago when we go back and find churches all over our country closing their doors rather than opening them on a Sunday morning. If you spent Any time on social media over the past two weeks, you've seen the quotes. You've seen C.S. Lewis, and you've seen Martin Luther, and you've seen Cyril Cyprian of Carthage, and they explain how believers responded to plagues, and to pestilence, and to nuclear threats. But in all of these, we have to go beyond our experience, beyond our collective memories, to access the wisdom of past believers, to find out how Christians have reacted when our lives are turned upside down. And we wonder, how should we live? What should we do when our children are scared? Perhaps when our jobs are threatened? Where can we go when even worship feels sterile? When we're scattered across the reaches of the internet, where can we go? Well, we go to God's word, of course. We go where believers have gone for thousands of years. We go to the Psalms this morning. where God's wisdom is played out in human affliction. In Psalm 63, we learn the lesson again, that even in seasons of disruption, God will satisfy the soul that seeks him. That's the main point of this psalm. That's our main idea today, that God will satisfy the soul that seeks him. Now, there's a theme that runs throughout this psalm, and it has to do with what's going on in David's soul. You see in verse one that David's soul is seeking God. Earnestly, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, he says. You see in verse five, David's soul is satisfied in God. My soul will be satisfied, he says. And then again in verse eight, David's soul is secure as God's right hand holds him up. And that's how we're going to approach the psalm today. looking at what it means to seek the Lord and to be satisfied in Him and to be secure in His provision for us. We're going to begin with seeking the Lord. Now before you even get into the body of the psalm, the first thing that you notice about this passage is that this is a psalm for desperate times. The title tells us that David wrote this song while he was in the wilderness of Judah. And that narrows it down to one of two main times in David's life. It means that either David wrote this song while he was on the run from Saul, or he wrote this song while he was on the run from his son Absalom. Then we look down at the end and we realize that David calls himself the king. And so it makes the decision between those two times in his life pretty clear. David wrote this song while he was on the run during the rebellion of his son. his own flesh and blood had risen against him. There was a danger to David's life that threatened everyone else in Jerusalem if he were to simply stay where he was. And so David gathered all that he needed. He gathered enough men to fight along by his side and he went off into the isolation of the Judean wilderness. And it was in that wasteland while his family was divided, well, His life was on the line. In that wasteland, what was the greatest loss, the most serious deprivation that David experienced? What was it? Well, it was the loss of worship. It was David's separation from the place where God was present with his people. Take a look at verse two. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and your glory. Well, not anymore. Not from the wilderness. In the wilderness, David couldn't go to the tabernacle anymore. He couldn't smell the incense. He couldn't join the prayers of the people. David couldn't hear the voices of his fellow worshipers. He couldn't witness the sacrificial symbols of God's covenant mercy. And you can read about it in 2 Samuel chapter 15. As David was fleeing Jerusalem, some of the priests came and they came bringing the ark of God's covenant to go with David into the wilderness. But in verse 25 of that chapter, we read that the king said to Zadok the priest, carry the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back and let me see both it and his dwelling place. That's what the tabernacle was. The tabernacle was God's dwelling place. Not that God could be confined by the walls of a tent. Not that God could be quarantined into a sanctuary, but ever since Israel had come up out of Egypt, the Lord promised that he would meet with his people where his Ark was, where it was kept. And so the tabernacle was the tangible reminder for David and for all of Israel of communion with God. And now in the wasteland, as David contemplates his life in the wilderness, He cries out with longing. Verse one, oh God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you. As in a dry and weary land where there is no water. David speaks of God in terms of sustenance. Fellowship with the Lord is the food and the drink that feeds our souls. Without fellowship with the God who created us, Our souls wither and die for starvation. This is basic biblical teaching. God told Israel in the Old Testament that man does not live by bread alone. Jesus told the woman at the well that anybody who simply drinks the water of this life will only be thirsty all over again. And so David here, I think, is diagnosing our fundamental human need. We need more than food. and water and creature comforts in this life. Our greatest necessity is fellowship with the God who has made us. Now, one of the interesting things about this pandemic is the way that it has focused the eyes of everybody on the necessities of life. I was at the store this week, as probably many of you were, and I saw the shelves where the beans and the meat and the flour are normally kept, and they were empty. It's crazy though, the Oreos were still there and the candy aisle was overflowing and nobody had touched those things. And in stressful times, we tend to focus on what we think is really important and we can learn a lot about ourselves by what we focus on in these times. In Pennsylvania, all of the liquor stores are controlled, run and operated by the state. And so on Tuesday, The government announced that they would be closing all liquor stores. You can imagine the crowds that gathered to fill their cabinets before the shutdown began. And it's revealing, isn't it? Revealing what we really think is important. And when life is on the table, you can learn a lot about your soul by paying attention to the things that you're willing to do without and the things that you cannot live without. What about David? What could David not do? What could David not give up? What was he looking for? David's soul sought the Lord. He tells us by experience that he had learned, verse 3, that God's steadfast love was better than life. It was better than all of the pleasures that come along with living in this world. And so you could take away his kingdom. You could take away his family. You could take away his livelihood. David could live without alcohol and Netflix and access to the internet. He could learn to sleep in the wilderness with a rock for a pillow. But communion with God was the thirst that his soul could not ignore. Dear friends, how is it with you? The truth is we have more than our fill of the things of this life, even in times of shutdown. Even when we we start to speak that word recession, even when we're sequestered and isolated from one another. The reality is that for most Americans, and it's not to downplay the seriousness of coronavirus, for most Americans, coronavirus is going to be one enormous inconvenience. But it is also an opportunity to recognize what's most important to us. Perhaps one of the blessings that the Lord is giving us through all this is the grace of waking up to the weekly worship that we often take for granted. Haven't we sometimes merely gotten used to assuming that on the Lord's day, we can meet together? On the Lord's day, we can listen to the word and we can fellowship with God's people and we assume we can, of course, we can come to God's table. And so in our complacency from time to time, we come sleepy eyed. We allow our minds to wander, we think, about what's coming up in our weekly schedule while the gospel drones in the background. Well, folks, now our schedules are empty. And we need to think about what is most important. Maybe the Lord is teaching us through this how to listen to him all over again. Maybe the Lord is teaching us how to thirst for communion. Maybe he's calling us to seek him. That's what David is teaching us in this psalm. You know, there's an irony here. David went into the wilderness and he was separated from worship. And he longed for communion with God. But how did David seek the Lord that he was separated from? How did he seek him? Well, he sought him through worship. He sought him through praise and through honor to the Lord. He sought the Lord through worship. Take a look at verse three. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live in your name. I will lift up my hands. And this is the language of worship. Praise is how thirsting souls seek the Lord. And David tells us that those who seek the Lord will be satisfied in him. This is our second point. It's about our soul's satisfaction. Verse five. David says that my soul will be satisfied. As with fat and rich food, my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. This is not what you expect in the wilderness. Some of you have been camping and you know what camp food is like. It's canned beans and it's hot dogs and it's rice-a-roni boiled over a fire. Maybe from time to time you'll get a s'more or a granola bar, but even after a while, those get pretty boring. And David is envisioning in the midst of the wilderness, he's envisioning this royal banquet. The King James translates verse five by saying marrow and fatness. We have fat and rich food, but the King James says marrow and fatness. And if you've ever had marrow, you know exactly what David is talking about. Imagine if you could take prime rib and churn it into butter. That's what marrow is like. It was the ancient equivalent of foie gras. It was the absolute best meal that you could get, it was filling to overflowing. And David is saying, this is what it's like when he seeks the Lord in worship. His soul is able to push back from the table and he's able to say, I've had enough. I've satisfied. I have been filled with the goodness of the Lord. Now there's a whole theology behind what David is talking about here. But it comes back to the idea that God is willing to share himself with his people. You notice that David was seeking not something related to God. He wasn't looking for something pointing to God. David wasn't looking for God's gifts. He wasn't looking for his rules. He wasn't looking for his laws. He wasn't looking for his promises. David was hungry and he was thirsty for God himself. He longed for communion with the Lord of heaven and earth. And as he worshiped in the wilderness, he received what he was looking for. David was satisfied with a personal experience of God himself. In Reformed circles, we shy away from talking like this. Maybe it sounds too charismatic to us. We prefer to think of the life of the mind. We prefer to think that perhaps the Lord mediates his presence to us through systematic theology, doctrinal statements. And as long as we can wrap our minds around it, that is what it means to experience the Lord. But this is what Jesus promised in the New Testament. He told that woman at the well that though the waters of this life make us thirsty all over again, Jesus himself gives living water to slake our spiritual thirst. Later in that same gospel, in John chapter seven, beginning in verse 37, We read that Jesus cried out in the assembly of the people. He said, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. The next verse, John goes on to tell us that Jesus was saying this about the spirit, whom those who believed in him were about to receive. See, Jesus is promising what David was experiencing. When we seek the Lord through worship, we receive him. We don't receive something about him. We don't receive something from him. We receive him. We can be filled, says Ephesians chapter three, we can be filled with all the fullness of God. By God's indwelling spirit in his people, we can know The love of God that surpasses knowledge. Do you ever think about that? What it means to know something about God that goes beyond our knowledge, that's experiential language. That's the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts, making us satisfied with the Lord. And so when we seek the Lord through worship, we find him. We don't just find his gifts and his laws, we find the Lord. And this isn't the kind of thing that's tied to a particular place. Communion with God has never been limited to one location or one ceremony or one gathering of God's people. It's never been that way. Even in the days of the tabernacle and the sacrifices, David was able to be satisfied with God in the wilderness. So how much more now for us, now that God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who's been given to us as Paul in Romans chapter five. But it's a promise that we have to receive by faith, isn't it? It's the promise that even in times of adversity and separation and social isolation and distancing, even in times of adversity, we can be more satisfied with God than we are with all of the circumstances that we typically depend upon. And like so much in a Christian life, It's a promise that has to be believed before it can be seen. And so we might want to ask, well, how do we know if we've been satisfied by the Lord? How do we know if we've been filled with all the fullness of God? Is it some sort of deep, burning, warm, fuzzy feeling when we read God's word? Well, maybe. Is it a desire to go out and to do nice things for our neighbors? Well, maybe. But David gives us at least two answers here. How do we know, what does it look like to be filled and to be satisfied with the Lord. Two answers, David says, we know we've been satisfied with the Lord, one, when our lips are filled with his praise. It was hard to get away from worship in this passage. The Psalm presents us a kind of self-perpetuating cycle that works itself out, that we seek the Lord through blessing and praise, And what the Lord gives us in return is more blessing and praise. Verses three and four, I will praise you. I will bless you. I will lift up my hands. But what happens when we are satisfied with the Lord? What do we get from God's heavenly abundance? Verse five, my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. Verse seven, in the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy. It's the kind of thing that the world doesn't understand. Quite frankly, Christians very often don't understand this either. Very often our afflictions come to us and they take on a mind of their own. Very often they take upon the persona of Job's wife. Our hardships and our afflictions come to us and they whisper in our ear, why don't you just curse God and die already? And we don't know where it comes from. We don't know. how it happens, but we find ourselves unexplainedly repeating with Job, the Lord has given, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. That's one of the ways that you understand that you've been satisfied in God, that even in difficulty, your lips are filled with his praise. And secondly, David tells us, we know we've been satisfied with God when times of affliction And anxiety can become times of communion. David mentions in verse six, he mentions meditating upon the Lord in the watches of the night. If you spent a bunch of time awake at 3am, you know what a supernatural thing that is that David is talking about. There's nothing more natural. There's nothing more human than dwelling on our disappointments and our fears. and our frustrations and our failures. There's nothing more human than rehearsing them over and over again, trying to fix them all from some other angle. We're racing with our thoughts. And it seems that at 3 a.m., that's the time when we're most susceptible to these things, when our fears come looking for us. What David says, he was so satisfied with God that even the night watch had become a time of communion, became a time of meditation. It doesn't mean that he always slept like a baby. It didn't mean that sometimes his afflictions didn't rear their ugly heads and keep him awake, but he says that his satisfaction means even sleeplessness had become an opportunity to dwell on God's goodness more than on his disappointments. Dear friends, how is it with you? We're not facing what David faced. None of us are on the run from a violent coup. And yet I bet that this past week, many of us have had a few sleepless nights. You're worried. Worried about your parents. Worried about your neighbors. You're worried about your children. You read the news and you feel the press of affliction all over again. 793 dead in Italy yesterday. And how is it with your soul? Do you find that somehow, inexplicably, you are able to praise the Lord in the midst of the chaos? Have your waking hours become an opportunity to meditate on God's goodness in Christ? Do you find that he has satisfied your soul in the wilderness and in the isolation? This is the promise of Psalm 63. But the soul who seeks the Lord will be satisfied in him. The soul who seeks the Lord will also be secure in him. This brings us to our final point, and that is our soul's security. We've seen our soul's seeking, our soul's satisfaction, and now at the end, our soul's security. Now, if you've got the ESV, I really wish that they had broken this text up a little differently than they did. The ESV puts a space between verses eight and nine to indicate that the final thought begins in verse nine, actually begins in verse eight. You see these buzzwords that we found throughout the whole thing where David is talking about his soul. Well, it actually shows up twice in verses eight and nine. Verse eight says, my soul clings to you and your right hand upholds me. But then there's a contrast. In verse nine, the word that the ESV translates as life is actually the same word as soul. We found in verses one and five and eight. And so it should read, those who seek to destroy my soul shall go down into the depths of the earth. So maybe you see the contrast there in those two verses. David says, verse eight, my soul clings to God and he will hold me up. Verse nine, my enemies Seek my soul and God will cast them down. But in both verses, God is the primary mover and actor. It is his right hand that secures his people. It is God's arm of vengeance that cast down David's enemies. God is at work for his people and those who seek him find security in the shadow of his wings. Now this is a feature of almost all of David's Psalms. And just about everyone that we have from him, he spends some time speaking about his enemies and praising the Lord because the Lord has dealt with his enemies. And we get used, I think, to glancing over these portions and thanking the Lord that we don't have enemies like David had enemies. But you do. I'm not talking about coronavirus. I'm not talking about political enemies. You have enemies that are at least as deadly, at least as malicious as the men who sought to snuff out David's life. Every Christian lives their life in a battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And any one of them, given the chance, would be glad to shipwreck your faith and to ruin your witness. And so it helps when we read the Psalms and have our ears listening for the melody of the gospel in the background. David strikes the chords here of security, of vindication for God's people. And it's just a prelude in the symphony of the gospel. It's a prelude to that promise that Christ gives in John chapter 10. Remember what Jesus says there. Beginning in verse 27, Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish. and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of the Father's hand." That's what David said, isn't it? My soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me. My soul, he says, has sought and found satisfaction in the Lord. My soul has found security in the Father's hands And no enemy is strong enough to break God's grasp on his children. No angel, no demon, no affliction or temptation, no global pandemic is stronger than the hand of God that upholds his people. That's the promise. That there is security for all who have found satisfaction in the Lord through Christ. Of course, I can't promise you that coronavirus is going to disappear anytime soon. I can't promise you that we're going to gather together again by Easter and celebrate the resurrection in person together. I can't promise that. I can't promise that next week your retirement account is going to look the same as it did two weeks ago. I can't promise that the coronavirus isn't going to claim your parents or your relatives, maybe even your own life. But I can promise you what David promised. what he told us about the Lord, that as we cling to God, his right hand will hold us fast. That's the promise that we have because of Christ, because of his sacrifice on our behalf. It's Romans chapter eight all over again, that God has given us his son and having given us his son, will he not also give us all things in him? And so there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. He proved his love by sending his son to die for our sins. And as we seek him, as we find our satisfaction in him, there is security in the worst, in the most difficult times. There is security and joy in the Lord as our weary souls latch onto Christ. That's what we find in verse 11. The king will rejoice in God and all who swear by him will exult. And it ends with worship language all over again, rejoicing and exaltation, satisfaction, and seeking and singing in harmony together. It's what the song of God's people sounds like. It's the promise that God always satisfies the soul that seeks him. Would you join me together as we pray? Gracious Lord, our God, as we find ourselves scattered, we pray that you would give us satisfaction in you. We pray that you would draw our eyes and our understanding to you. We pray, oh Lord, that you would give us mercy in your name. We ask that you would bring this virus to an end, that you would bring about the sort of herd immunity that we need, and pray that these measures and all of the disruptions to our lives would be would be helpful in saving the lives of many. We pray, O Lord, that you would give us patience as we wait upon you, but much more than that, we pray that you would give us satisfaction in you. Keep us worshiping you, keep us seeking you, keep us praising you, even in the darkness and in the wilderness. Keep us, O Lord, by your righteous right hand. Remind us that there is nothing that can separate us from you and from your love for your children in Jesus Christ. Build us up and strengthen us in good hope in Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen. And now, hear God's good word for you, his benediction. Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.